I read Peace Like a River by Leif Enger recently for my book club, and it immediately went to my favorite-books-of-all-time list. I then read it aloud to my husband, but he didn’t appreciate it as well as I did.
It’s told from the viewpoint of an asthmatic 11 year old boy, Reuben Land, in the 1960’s whose religious father can work miracles. The plot revolves around his older brother Davy having killed some boys that attempted to rape his girlfriend and were threatening their family and most especially, their little sister, Swede.
Here are a bunch of my favorite passages from it. It’s so beautifully written.
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My sister, Swede, who often sees to the nub, offered this: People fear miracles because they fear being changed–though ignoring them will change you also. Swede said another thing, too and it rang in me like a bell: No miracle happens without a witness. Someone to declare, Here’s what I saw. Here’s how it went. Make of it what you will.
The fact is, the miracles that sometimes flowed from my father’s fingertips had few witnesses but me. Yes, enough people saw enough strange things that Dad became the subject of a kind of misspoken folklore in our town, but most ignored the miracles as they ignored Dad himself.
I believe I was preserved, through those twelve airless minutes, in order to be a witness, and as a witness, let me say that a miracle is no cute thing but more like the swing of a sword.
If he were here to begin the account, I believe Dad would say what he said to Swede and me on the worst night of all our lives:
We and the world, my children, will always be at war.
Retreat is impossible.
Arm yourselves.
(Pg 3-4)
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So here is where my father wakes. He sits upright, and his eyes are wide and troubled, and “Son,” he says, “we have to leave.”
Because he knows, somehow, what we have done: We have stayed too long at church.
So let us leave. Let us get to the Plymouth with an impolite quickness–let us *fly*, as witnesses of eras past might say. Because at home, the hard and esculating war has paid us a visit. And it’s Swede, my darling sister, who has met it at the door.
(Pg 33)
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But when we stepped out from the trees, stepped out into a peevish wind, the sky telling of winter, evening-colored at four in the afternoon–shouldn’t I have felt something then? As we walked toward home, toward lighted windows, shouldn’t I have sensed the Lands adrift, pushed off course, gone wayward?
(Pg 44)
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And when did he know just what he’d done? We’ve wondered that, Swede and I. When did it come to Davy Land that exile is a country of shifting borders, hard to quit yet hard to endure, no matter your wide shoulders, no matter your toughened heart?
(Pg 50)
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Thinking of supper, I asked, “You want us to do anything, Dad?”
“Persevere,” he said.
It was a better answer than we wanted. What else do you do when the landscape suddenly changes? When all mirrors tilt?
(Pg 57-8)
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Good advice is a wise man’s friend, of course; but sometimes it just flies on past, and all you can do is wave.
(pg 75)
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Listen: There are easier things than witnessing a miracle of God. For his part, Mr. Holgren didn’t know what to make of it; he looked horrified; the new peace in his skin didn’t sink deep; he covered his face from view and slunk from the cafeteria.
I knew what had happened, though. I knew exactly what to make of it, and it made me mad enough to spit.
What business had Dad in healing that man?
What right had Holgren to cross paths with the Great God Almighty?
The injustice took my breath away, truly it did. I felt a great hand close against my lungs and Miss Karlen escorted me gasping to the nurse’s office, where Mrs. Beulah plugged in her teapot and made a steam tent from a bolt of canvas.
When Dad came to take me home–having boxed up the contents of his single drawer in the boiler room–I wouldn’t go with him. I stayed on Mrs. Beulah’s couch. Dad lifted a corner of the canvas and peeked under.
“Looks like I’m getting a little vacation,” he said.
I nodded.
“I’m sorry you saw that.”
His getting fired, not the other thing.
“How about we go home.”
But I shook my head. I just couldn’t go with him. Nor could I tell him it wasn’t the public mistreatment that stole my breath and blocked my tongue; it was something too mean to explain. It was the fact that Chester the Fester, the worst man I’d ever seen, even worse in his way than Israel Finch, got a whole new face to look out of and didn’t even know to be grateful; while I, my father’s son, had to be still and resolute and breathe steam to stay alive.
(Pg 80)
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I saw it happening but could not stop it. Humility came to me too late. I’m a living proverb; learn from me.
(Pg 92)
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How could we *not* believe the Lord would guide us? How could we not have faith? For the foundation had been laid in prayer and sorrow. Since that fearful night, Dad had responded with the almost impossible work of belief. He had burned with repentance as though his own hand had fired the gun. He had laid up prayer as if with a trowel. You know this is true, and if you don’t it is I the witness who am to blame.
(Pg 131)
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But that was only part of it. In truth I got a little scared, and preoccupied about where we’d go from here. For I had asked this of Dad the previous night, asked it straight out: Where do we go from August’s? He didn’t know. We’d simply go forth, he said, like the children of Israel when they packed up and cameled out of Egypt. He meant to encourage me. Just like us, the Israelites hadn’t any idea where they’d end up! Just like us, they were traveling by faith! Indeed, it did impart a thrill, yet the trip thus far, in the frigid and torpid Plymouth, had reminded me what a hard time the chosen people actually had of it. Once traveling, it’s remarkable how quickly faith erodes. It starts to look like something else–ignorance, for example. Same thing happened to the Israelites. Sure it’s weak, but sometimes you’d rather just have a map.
(Pg 134)
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It’s been this part folks disbelieve–not that the saddle was made whole but that Swede had gone all this time without seeing it. Odd on the face of it, I know–I know. But we’re fearful people, the best of us. We see a newborn moth unwrapping itself and announce, Look, children, a miracle! But let an irreversible wound be knit back to seamlessness? We won’t even see it, though we look at it everyday.
(Pg 173-4)
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Anyway, I didn’t want to look at Swede. It is one thing to be sick of your own infirmities and another to understand that the people you love most are sick of them also. You are very near then to being friendless in the world.
(Pg 186)
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I recall the quilted jolts of that ride, the radiant warmth of the horse’s rump and the sulfury odor of Davy’s coat, and I recall the black remorse that flapped down and perched on me as we rode, for this time I was sneaking out on Dad. You can embark on new and steeper versions of your old sins, you know, and cry tears while doing it that are genuine as any.
(Pg 247-8)
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Someday, you know, we’re going to be shown the great ledger of our recorded decisions–a dread concept you nonetheless know in your deepest soul is true.
(Pg 280)
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She sat beside me cross-legged, like a Sioux, and held my hand again, as though we would wait together for whatever was moving toward us through the night. At that moment there was nothing–no valiant history or hopeful future–half worth my sister’s pardon. Listening to Dad’s guitar, halting yet lovely in the search for phrasing, I thought: Fair is whatever God wants to do.
(Pg 294)
